'''Michael Frishkopf''', Professor of Music at the University of Alberta, is an ethnomusicologist and composer. A graduate of Yale College (BS Mathematics, 1984), Tufts University (MA Ethnomusicology, 1989), and the University of California, Los Angeles (Ph.D. Music, 1999), Dr. Frishkopf’s ethnomusicological research interests include music of the Arab world; Sufi music; sound in Islamic ritual performance; music and religion; comparative music theory; the sociology of musical taste; social network analysis; (virtual [world) music]; digital music repositories; machine learning for music information retrieval; music in West Africa; participatory action research; psychoacoustics and music cognition; music and global health; and music for global human development.

+

'''Michael Frishkopf''', Professor of Music at the University of Alberta, is an ethnomusicologist and composer. A graduate of Yale College (BS Mathematics, 1984), Tufts University (MA Ethnomusicology, 1989), and the University of California, Los Angeles (Ph.D. Music, 1999), Dr. Frishkopf’s ethnomusicological research interests include music of the Arab world; Sufi music; sound in Islamic ritual performance; music and religion; comparative music theory; the sociology of musical taste; social network analysis; (virtual [world) music]; digital music repositories; machine learning for music information retrieval; music in West Africa; participatory action research; psychoacoustics and music cognition; music and global health; music as medicine; and music for global human development.

His research and teaching combine a number of different fields, including ethnomusicology, anthropology, Middle East studies, religious/Islamic studies, psychoacoustics, computer science, media studies, literary studies, music theory. He is a lifetime member of the Society for Ethnomusicology, the International Council for Traditional Music, and the Middle East Studies Association of North America.

His research and teaching combine a number of different fields, including ethnomusicology, anthropology, Middle East studies, religious/Islamic studies, psychoacoustics, computer science, media studies, literary studies, music theory. He is a lifetime member of the Society for Ethnomusicology, the International Council for Traditional Music, and the Middle East Studies Association of North America.

Introduction

Michael Frishkopf, Professor of Music at the University of Alberta, is an ethnomusicologist and composer. A graduate of Yale College (BS Mathematics, 1984), Tufts University (MA Ethnomusicology, 1989), and the University of California, Los Angeles (Ph.D. Music, 1999), Dr. Frishkopf’s ethnomusicological research interests include music of the Arab world; Sufi music; sound in Islamic ritual performance; music and religion; comparative music theory; the sociology of musical taste; social network analysis; (virtual [world) music]; digital music repositories; machine learning for music information retrieval; music in West Africa; participatory action research; psychoacoustics and music cognition; music and global health; music as medicine; and music for global human development.

His research and teaching combine a number of different fields, including ethnomusicology, anthropology, Middle East studies, religious/Islamic studies, psychoacoustics, computer science, media studies, literary studies, music theory. He is a lifetime member of the Society for Ethnomusicology, the International Council for Traditional Music, and the Middle East Studies Association of North America.

He has received numerous fellowships supporting his research, including grants from Fulbright, the American Research Center in Egypt, the Social Science Research Council, the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation, the Killam Foundation (Canada), the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada, supporting his extensive fieldwork in Egypt.

In performance, Michael specializes in the nay (Middle Eastern reed flute), and also performs the song-drum-dance traditions of Ghana. He is the founder (in 2004) of the University of Alberta Middle Eastern and North African Music Ensemble, as well as the University of Alberta West African Music Ensemble (in 1999). Both ensembles perform frequently in public in the Edmonton area, especially to support progressive causes. He also performs “Third Stream” and world music inflected jazz on the piano, following studies with Ran Blake and others in the Third Stream program at the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston.

Some current projects include:

Sounds of Islam and Sufi ritual

Music, Sound, and Architecture in Islam

Music media and the music industry in the Arab world

[Virtual (world] music) - world music and ethnomusicology in cyberworlds

Applied Ethnomusicology

In recent years, I’ve moved sharply towards an engaged ethnomusicology, centered on what I call music and global human development, collaborating on production of “traditional” and “popular” musics (including media and music education) as tools for global development of communities marginalized and disempowered by colonialism and its aftermath, on either side of the North-South divide between “developed” and “developing” nations. Such work follows a participatory action research paradigm, ideally engaging local communities as equals, and subjecting all work to critical reflective scrutiny.

A set of participatory action research projects centered on the use of popular music to disseminate development messages, especially for key development issues in public health, education, religious/ethnic tolerance, and peace. I have been working primarily in collaboration with Liberian refugee musicians in Ghana, and recent returnees to Liberia, helping them articulate and disseminate musical messages of peace and development, producing media with a triple purpose: catalyzing positive social change locally, raising awareness globally, and generating a revenue stream to support their musical communities.

Projects for cultural continuity, supporting Ewe music of Ghana, El Mastaba Centre for Egyptian Folk Music, the Egyptian Centre for Culture and Art, and AMAR (Foundation for Arab Music Archiving and Research), Beirut, including consulting as a member of the Board. Media products are designed to catalyze local social progress, raise global awareness, and generate a revenue stream for local musicians.

Mobilizing scholarship for talented but underprivileged Ghanaian musicians, such as Kofi Avi, so they can complete a well-rounded education.

Traditional Egyptian music culture

Collaboration with El Mastaba Center for Egyptian Folk Music, Cairo, to preserve, archive, document and develop Egyptian music. We are developing an applied research project to support digitization and metadata tagging for El Mastaba's extensive collections, while simultaneously providing training in these procedures to enable sustainability, with in-kind support through secure offsite storage at the University of Alberta.

Collaboration with AMAR (Foundation for Arab Music Archiving and Research), Beirut: to preserve and disseminate archival recordings of traditional Arab music from the early 20th century. Member of the Board of Directors.

World music presentations to local Edmonton schools and daycares (ongoing series of presentations, at the University of Alberta, or onsite)

Multimedia projects

Documentary video

Giving Voice to Health: Sanitation and Safe Water - Music for Social Justice in Liberia: (music video), and (documentary). Collaborations with Liberian artists.

Shadow and Music in Buduburam(longer version). Collaborative documentary video on and with Liberian refugee music producer. Produced with support from the President’s Fund for the Performing and Creative Arts, in collaboration with musicians of the Buduburam refugee camp.

Documentary audio

Producer and writer for cassette/CD recording: Giving Voice to Hope: Music of Liberian Refugees. Audio CD with 28 page descriptive booklet (2009), documenting music produced by musicians living in the Buduburam refugee camp in Ghana. Since 1990s this camp has sheltered refugees from conflict in nearby Liberia. Production is designed to raise public awareness about the camp, while returning profits to its participating NGOs and artists. (http://bit.ly/buducd)

Digital repositories

Principal Investigator and project director, VMCTM: Virtual Museum of Canadian Traditional Music. Sponsored by Virtual Museum Canada and the Canadian Heritage Information Network. (funded by Canadian Heritage Information Network). Managed complex three year development, including over a dozen participants, a partnership with Smithsonian Folkways, and a $175,000 budget. In French and English.

SonoCairo searchable web 2.0 catalog. Relational database containing metadata for several thousand cassette recordings produced by the Egyptian state recording company (SonoCairo) from 1962 to present, based on Egypt research 2003-04 (in development)

Technology

Folkways in Wonderland: An immersive collaborative virtual environment for browsing world music and doing ethnomusicology. Constructed in collaboration with colleagues in computer science at the University of Aizu, Japan, and in partnership with Smithsonian Folkways, with support from folkwaysAlive! and SSHRC (approx. $20,000 to date)

World Music in Wonderland (WMiW).

MuDoc (Music/Multimedia Documentation) peer-reviewed federated world music web digital repository. Designed digitial repository for music multimedia (text, score, audio, video), supported by funding from Sun Microsystems, Alberta Ministry of Innovation and Science, and the University of Alberta (over $300,000 total).

Helen's Necklace (several versions, and score), composed and performed for Carole Frechette's acclaimed play, and performed in 2005, at the Shadow Theatre

Spacings, for two pianos and two flutes, inspired by forms of traditional Zimbabwean mbira music (2007)

BaAka Soundings, a stochastic piece for variable-sized ensemble including mixed chorus, bell, and percussion sticks. Programmed in R, drawing on melodic cells and polyphonic style of the BaAka people, Central African Republic. Composed for a production of The Ik, by Colin Turnbull; directed by Heather Fitzsimmons, and performed at Edmonton’s Walterdale Playhouse, 2000.

e-Dhikr, inspired by Sufi sounds of Cairo. Composed and performed (entirely) by M. Frishkopf, with nay, percussion, voice, and looper. (2008)

Annual World Music Sampler, 2005 to present (yearly concert featuring our three world music ensembles: the West African Music Ensemble, the Indian Music Ensemble, and the Middle Eastern and North African Music Ensemble)

Quotations

"Listen to everything all the time and remind yourself when you are not listening." -- Pauline Oliveros

"After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music" -- Aldous Huxley

Ethnomusicology provides the broadest possible frame for studying music; as "the meaningful social-linguistic-sonic practice of studying music as a meaningful social-linguistic-sonic practice" ethnomusicology achieves recursive breadth: it becomes a legitimate object of its own study (Frishkopf 2016).

“My soul is a hidden orchestra; I know not what instruments, what fiddlestrings and harps, drums and tamboura I sound and clash inside myself. All I hear is the symphony.” -- Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet

"Music is living sound" -- Willard Rhodes

Music is more than sound, for silence is also music -- Michael Frishkopf

"I have nothing to say and I'm saying it" -- John Cage

"Music, in performance, is a type of sculpture. The air in the performance is sculpted into something.” -- Frank Zappa

"Music is among the most powerful of all social technologies" -- M. Frishkopf

"The craft of singing...is the first to disappear from a given civilization when it disintegrates and retrogresses."
- Ibn Khaldun, 14th century